JAPANESE LITERATURE. The literature of Japan falls into three groups correspond ing to three periods in the nation's history. The first represents primitive Japan still feeling frreign influence but slightly. The literature is in archaic Ja panese,though already Chinese and marks of Chinese civilization may be de tected. The traditions. hymns. and prayers of Shin to. or `thc. Way of the Gods,' came from immemorial antiquity by oral tradition. and were reduced to written form in the beginning of the eighth cen tury A-D. The Ko-ji-1.i, Record of Ancient Mat ters, is the most important member of this group and perhaps the most important work produced in Japan. It has been called the Bible of the Japanese, although it contains neither doctrine nor ethics. It is a mass of loosely connected and fragmentary legends and annals, setting forth the history of the world, that is Japan, from the Divine Age, the beginning. Its first trustworthy date is iu the middle of the fifth century A.D., but its materials become scanty in proportion to their historic trustworthiness. The book, how eter, contains most valuable matter for the critical scholar, being his most important source for the reconstruction of ancient Japan. Even in the eignth century Japan was feeling the mighty influence of the Chinese civilization, and thenceforth scholars studied its language and literature, while they left pure Japanese to romance and poetry and trifles, the amusement of women, and of men in their lighter moods. Archaic Japanese, already unintelligible, gave way to classical forms. and women furnished the models of literary style. This literature reached its culmination in the capital, Kioto, in the ninth and tenth centuries. It reflects the elegant, trilling• and immoral life of the Court in romances which show the customs and manners of the pe riod accurately and tediously. The novels are strings of incidents without unity or attention to the relation of character to event, with super natural marvels interspersed, and palace intrigue as the chief interest. The poetry is more at tractive from its curious unlikeness to other verse. It has neither rhyme nor quantity nor parallelism, but consists simply of alternate lines of five and seven syllables. the usual 'poem' con taining thirty-one syllables in all, two pairs of five and seven, with a final seven added. A few poems are longer, and a later form restricts the syllables still more severely to seventeen. But even within these narrow limits room is found for 'pillow words,' mere ornaments without sig nificance used as 'rests' for other words. The subjects are as few- as the syllables, birds. flowers, mountains, the moon, the rain. and snow, the autumn leaves, the wind and other themes asso ciated with them. Often the verse merely hints a picture which the reader's imagination must complete. There are travels, too. and diaries. and miscellanies filled with reflections and fancies. After the tenth century few additions of value were made to this literature. It continued to be cultivated, but it revolved around the same trite subjects• imitated the same models, and was capable of no further development. In the seven te•nth and eighteenth centuries a group of schol ars attempted to revive the ancient faith. Shinto. in its pure form. As a part of their endeavor they wrote in pure Japanese, attempting to ex clude all Chinese elements, but the literary fash ion never extended very far, nor did it produce important results. In modern times a vast form less literature has been created for the masses, for the greater part novels, in the colloquial or in a simple written style paying little attention to the canons of classical Japanese literature. Nat it is ignored by educated men.
Doubtless even the first collections of tradi tions and rituals were made because Chinese in fluence was already powerful. and they were put in written form only by the aid of Chinese ideo graphs. Buddhism won Japan in the sixth and
seventh centuries A.D., and brought with it Chinese civilization. Henceforth Chinese litera ture in form and matter was supreme. The Ko ji-ki was given its written form in archaic Jap anese in the year A.D. 712, and it was followed in the year 720 by the Niliongi, which covered much the same ground, hut was written in Chi nese. As Rome in language, ideals, philosophy, law, and literature ruled Europe in the Middle Ages, so did China influence Japan. The Chinese classics were the models of style, as they were the unquestioned authority in religion and morals. Buddhism brought its voluminous works, his torical, doctrinal, sectarian, polemic, exegetical, philosophical, with it, and the Japanese set them selves to master and appropriate these riches. Nothing new of importanc' was produced, if we except, possibly, the canonical writings of the Shin sect. which is accounted heretical by all the rest, and as a matter of fact denies what Buddha affirmed and for the most part affirms what he denied. From the twelfth century until nearly the end of the sixteenth Japan was tormented by feudal strife. Letters were cultivated by monks, and even in the seventeenth century it required an argument to persuade the higher classes that letters were for others besides priests. With the final restoration of peace under the Tokugawa family (1603-136S). there was a revival of learn ing. China again gave the impulse. but it was no longer the Buddhistic China of the sixth cen tury, for the literati had by this time rejected the Indian faith, and had set forth Confucianism as a fully developed philosophy and cosmogony. Introduced into Japan in the beginning of the seventeenth century, this was thenceforth the re ligion of the higher classes, and Buddhism was left to priests, women, and the ignorant masses. But• as before, Japan added little to the con trolling ideas of the new learning. It imported the varying schools of Chinese thought, fought over the same battles with the same argu ments and illustrations, but there was no native development. Chinese language, history, litera ture, and poetry furnished models which satis fied all literary needs. Yet it was not mere copy ing, nor was the change wholly superficial. for the two empires are animated by different spirits and these are shown in their respective literatures, so that Sinieo-Japanese is entitled to a place by itself and is something more than ,a mere branch of the greater literature of its more original neighbor.
Again in the present age Japanese literature has undergone a transformation. The style itself has changed, though still held in the bondage of the Sinico-Japanese. but newspapers and reviews with the popularization of knowledge no longer permit the maintenance of the rigid standards of the past. Besides, the with the whole range of Chinese literature which the older forms presupposed no longer exists except for specialists. As in the seventeenth century the orthodox Confucian philosophy supplanted the earlier Buddhist teaching. so now have Chinese literature and history given way before the his tory, philosophy, ethics. theology, romance, poetry, and. above all, science of the Occident. Judging from the past, we may expect vigor ous assimilation of Western literature. and its transformation into forms congenial to this peo ple, who. hospitable to ideas from foreign lands, bmow how to impress themselves upon the im portations and amid all changes to preserve the spirit of Old ,lapan.
Consult: The Transactions of the Asiatic So ciety of Japan ( Yokohama , 187 1-98 ; London, 1895 et seq.) ; Chamberlain, The Classical Poetry of the Japanese ( London, 1880) ; Aston, History of Japanese Literature (New York, 1899) ; Slit ford, Tales of Old Japan (6111 ed., London, 1890).